James Hugh Drury
In
1998, my wife and I, with amiable agreement, filed for divorce. Thirty days later
we attended a seven-minute hearing that undid 28 years, and then went our
separate ways. My way took me through a
desert, trying to avoid admitting how deeply the pain went. My congregation stuck
by me. Libby, my therapist, didn’t let me get away with anything. She, along
with those who stayed close to me, was right: healing takes time.
As the manuscript grew, I asked friends to read it.
After I read "Looking East" during the Island Institute’s 1998 Sitka
Symposium, Carolyn Servid, institute co-director, asked to publish the story in
Connotations, the institute's journal. It appeared in the Summer 1998
edition. (The story came first, written the weekend we decided to get the
divorce, journals next, the rest of the poems and the other two stories
followed.)
What a tragedy to experience this grief and not
learn from it, to have so many people touch my life and not be changed. My prayer is that someone experiencing a sharpness of grief
will know I understand. I pray that God gives them courage to walk through
their wilderness into renewal. It is not fun. It is hard work. It is worth
every ounce of sweat, each drop of blood, each emotion admitted, and every
honest word spoken or written. Now, today,. looking east into another sunrise, I
see a blessed journey. Joy comes in
the mourning and in the morning.
The Rev. James Drury has published
articles, poems, and short stories. The LUTHERAN Magazine was his first national credit, “Marching
to Hope”. April, 1997. Since 1997 he
has written a yearly article about his congregation’s history for All About Sitka, an annual print run of
50,000 published by The Daily Sitka Sentinel. From 2000 to 2002 he wrote for Adventures, Sheldon Jackson
College’s magazine.
His poetry credits include poems in the
December editions of CURRENTS in Theology and Mission,
1981, 1982, and 1986. The CHRISTIAN
Century published his poem “Resurrection” in the April 19, 2003, edition.
“Looking East,” first
appeared in Connotations: The Journal of
the Island Institute, Summer, 1998.
He
has averaged 70 sermons a year for over 30 years, over a million words. Add annual
Christmas poems, newsletter stories, bulletin articles, song lyrics, technical
writing, and web content for web sites he’s designed, and he has a full resume,
but wants more. A Sharpness of Grief
is the next step in his career as a writer.
Hollow
We are the hollow men . . . T. S. Eliot
I thought to use the lines to begin a story
only to discover I am those words
fitted to brokenness
between light and dark
waiting for healing to drop like rain
more than 30 years ago sitting on a table
at her summer camp, in purple sweats,
smiling, anticipating my arrival
her then casual boyfriend told me
I’d fall in love at first sight
I did every bit of that and more
and do as we knew some passion
eased into a friendship born
but finally by agreement
lived into low-risk companionship
today the hollow place
breaks open for all good reasons
